Author Archives:

Star Trek: Into Darkness

you must watch Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan before seeing the new movie.

We got to see this movie early thanks to free tickets acquired by the Columbus Area Boardgame Society (CABS).

I loved it, there’s a lot to discuss.

Not necessarily spoilers:
The engine room was filmed at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Labs.

You must watch Wrath of Khan before seeking this movie. Did I mention that?

I (heart) Kirk Spock Checkov Bones McCoy.

Also, short skirts are a bad design choice in fluctuating-gravity environments. It irritated me.

TBR Campaign Initial Sort List

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snort! the intention of the TBR Topple Campaign is to *reduce* the number of books on the list. Let’s dive in and see what we shall see.

Alright, thanks for participating guys. I’m going to follow the lead of Lynn and effingrainbow and do an initial sort list. I counted the books I had photoed in the starter post, there were over 120.

Some titles on my NewShiny List. They’re here because I really like each author’s other works very much.

  • The Black Bottle, Anthony Huso — his first in the series, The Last Page, is my secret true love. I even read it *twice*. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t want to be disappointed in the second, I loved the first one so much.
  • Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey — the first in this series called The Expanse, Leviathan Wakes is on a permanent Best Of list for me. I’ve been putting this one off because I know I’ll enjoy it. (??? I know, that makes sense, I know)
  • The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord — Have you read Redemption in Indigo?
  • Sword-Bound, Jennifer Roberson — Roberson is my high-water mark for excellent characterization. I bought this one when it came out but haven’t read it yet, I’m thinking I’ll give myself a real treat and re-read all the previous first. This one is like, #7, I think.
  • The Finder Library, vol. 1, by Carla Speed McNeil — I have this borrowed from the library. I normally am a slow reader, but graphic novels I read very slowly because I enjoy them so much. The Finder universe is *very* dense and there’s a lot to explore and take in. I’m going to purchase a copy for myself so that I can get this back to the library and stop worrying about spilling coffee on it.
  • Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson — I’ve told you how much I love Nalo Hopkinson’s stuff. However, I’m going to spread the jam,  so to speak, and leave this one for later.

Newer books that I haven’t read the authors before:

  • Zoo City, Lauren Beukes — this came to my attention with a recommended list from Cheryl Morgan, here.
  • Spin State, Chris Moriarty — another recommended via Cheryl Morgan.

Oldies Rediscovered. One of my hugest pleasures is to find older SF that has gone out of print and sort of forgotten. Many of these are in that pile:

  • Venus of Dreams, Pamela Seargent — wait! I think I have a second copy of this! back in a mo… Oh. Genius! I have also Child of Venus. Evidently this is a #1 and #2.
  • The Sardonyx Net, Elizabeth A. Lynn — I *do* have two copies of this. It was reprinted.
  • Vast, Linda Nagata — Everything about Linda Nagata looks cool.
  • The Many Coloured Land, by Julian May — another recc’d from Cheryl Morgan, just from email, I think.
  • To Reign in Hell, Steven Brust — Jonah wrote a song about it.
  • Wings of Wrath by C.S. Friedman — doh! This is a second, I need to pick up the first. DAW has done a real botch-job with all of her other ebook conversions so I’m not going to waste my money on the ebook.
  • Half the Day is Night, Maureen McHugh — Have you read China Mountain Zhang?
  • The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. Macintyre — I really enjoyed Dreamsnake, and this one is supposed to become a movie starring some famous guy, maybe.
  • Intruder and The Faded Sun, both by C.J. Cherryh — Cherryh’s Foreigner series is highly lauded, and I’ve read that her later in the series (of about seventy) are easier to read. The Faded Sun is an omnibus, and somehow I picked up the idea that the Merovingen Nights (TM) shared world anthology are a tangential of this trilogy.

… I’m going to stop there. Clearly, that’s enough for now. heh!

 

 

 

Dino game: the verdict.

Meh.

Risk with Dino tokens. Rating: borrow from a friend.

The game functions with two players but is a little dull. I think it could handle another level of complexity. Perhaps one of the players playing the part of the carnivorous dinosaurs.

Suggestions: take out all the pieces and make your own game.

Or! Drill holes in the Dino Meeples and make a necklace.

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Il Vecchio Game

Here we are in lovely Tuscany, 1431, undermining the Medici.

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Il Vecchino is a new board game from Tasty Minstrel Games.

It’s a points accumulator game, but the half a dozen different ways to gain points keep you at your opponent’s throat, a la Medici.

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This game plays very well with two people. Allow two hours for the first game but subsequent 2-player games take about an hour.

There’s no card or rules defined aggressive actions (such as a “thief”). The game itself is aggressive, players strategizing a few moves ahead to occupy prime spots in Florence, or earning valuable Medici crests.

Highly recommended for you home library.

Plus, I won.

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Next up: dinosaur game!!!

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TBR Topple Campaign

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One solution for handling the TBR pile: read them all simultaneously.

Normally, I have a rather long list of books I intend to read, and things fall off the end as I add more to the beginning of that list, but things have gotten pretty out of hand as of late. My experience is that I want to read them all at the same time, paralyzed by indecision.

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The hallway

As–surely–I am not the only one with an overwhelming selection of Want To Reads, I wanted to propose a party of sorts for toppling these monster TBR piles.

 

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They’re starting to self-articulate and gain a consciousness, here in the kitchen:

Arrange for yourself some “me” time, about two hours, sometime over the next four weeks. (Between now and mid-June-ish). Take the kids to the day spa, send the dogs to Gramma’s, quit your job*, whatever it is in your life that you need to do to give yourself a couple of hours, uninterrupted.

Also, provide supplies for this reading event. Buy a case of cheesy-chips, make an entire thermos of Perfect Tea, program a playlist on the music-thingy. Whatevs.

 

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This is silly, here on my sewing machine. Wonder why I’m not getting any quilting done?

Now that the time and space have been arranged, choose a few from the TBR mountain. The intent is to explore, not to finish, ok? Maybe you have some books that look interesting but not normally your thing. Maybe you have some #2 of different trilogies–check them out and see if it’s worth finding book #1. Maybe you have a pile of guilt bomb lends or recommendations. Maybe your pile consists entirely of SUPERINCREDOAWSOMESAUCE and they all need to be read right now.  And so on. The “rules”:

  • these are not books to be committed to or finished right now. Maybe later but not right now.
  • we’re not expected to do a review for every book in that pile
  • explore the books. Read a chapter or two. Move on to the next.
  • yes, of course non-SF/F and ebooks and audio are all “allowed”

The blog post on your blog for this TBR Topple Campaign will run something like this:
List of the books, how and why they came to be on your pile. Initial Survey: is there a map? glossary? other “bonus” material? Read a chapter or two and tell us your first impressions of this book and/or author’s voice. Is this a book you’ll come back to or abandon? Is there an audio that maybe you’ll switch to if you’re an audio fictioneer? And so forth. Do this, and run your post before June 20. I’ll run my post over the weekend to kick things off.

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The books next to my reading chair. If you need a visual representation of “indecision”, that’s it there.

Of course, I’m certain that my to-read list will grow after reading all of your lists. Heh! Let’s see how it goes. If you would like a badge thingy, here is one:

topple*please don’t do that. “Quit your job” was offered as a funny exaggeration.

New Words: gribble

“It resembled a large ring, but was really two conjoined semicirclets of twisted gold, thick as a finger and rounded, incised with tortuous little markings like the borings of gribbles in a sea-logged wood.”
-from The Many-Colored Land by Julian May

grib·ble \ˈgri-bəl\ noun: either of two small wood-boring marine isopods (Limnoria lignorum and L. tripunctata)
Origin: perhaps alteration of grub.
First use: 1838

(I’ll stop with this one. As this is only page two, I suspect the new words will continue to be frequent.)

New Words: astrobleme

“Far along the rim of the astrobleme, in both directions, she could see other such birds standing widely spaced, all looking into the dark-mirrored depths.”
-from Julian May The Many-Colored Land

as•tro•bleme n. [GEOLOGY] an eroded remnant of a large crater made by the impact of a meteorite or comet. mid 20th cent.: from Greek astron ‘star’ + ‘wound’

Aethernet Magazine and Shadow Unit: two things worth charging your e-whatsit for

Aethernet Magazine has re-vivified the serial story. A serial, I learned from reading Issue 1, gives you bits of a story in every issue, a-la Chuckie Dickens.

Let me tell you: the cliffhanger, the tenterhooks, this business of leaving off at the really exciting bit and making me wait until the next issue? It totally works.

The thing is, it surprised me. I’m pretty cynical, so I went into a magazine of serialized fiction thinking “o sure, I understand how this works, so you won’t catch me up in an emotional froo-ha-ha, waiting with bated breath for the next issue.”

Crap. That’s crap. I actually had to
wake up Hubs to tell him about this amazing story and I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! …he was not impressed, sleepily not understanding why Juliet McKenna was mailing cereal to me.

I’ve read a *lot* of McKenna, so her writing style is familiar to me, but what she’s done with this story completely blindsided me. The story starts out in the idyllic Not-Backwater-England which is totally typical McKenna–she does this so well: “settle down and be cozy in this calm little story about a wee village with thatched huts and a butcher,” and then kablammo …

Heh-heh. Try it!

Though I bought the magazine for the McKenna, of course, I’m reading the others now. The Adrian Tchaikovsky is interesting so far, very D&D magic systems style characters. And spiders.

“Penthos, what’s a word for something that’s all over covered in spiders?” (from Mirkwood Blues by Adrian Tchaikovsky)

***

The second thing of interest I wanted to share is Shadow Unit, a shared world collection of novellas edited by Emma Bull and Elizabeth Bear.

They’re up to issue 14 now.

It’s urban fantasy in D.C., set up as though the writers were writing for a hit TV series.

…more later, I want to get back to these spiders…